Despite the nonsense that Americans hear from their national elected leaders, climate change is the single biggest policy challenge we face.\u00a0 There is no doubt that the planet is heating up and that human activities are the primary driver of global warming.\u00a0 The burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, are the most significant culprits in those human activities.<\/p>\n
Scientists have known that the planet is heating up \u2013 even scientists working for oil companies have known that \u2013 for decades.\u00a0 And what is increasingly clear from independent analyses is that the fossil fuel industries have done all they can to undermine the science behind climate change and to use their considerable political clout to install sympathetic lawmakers in key positions of government.<\/p>\n
And that effort has largely succeeded in the U.S., but the science keeps building and the impacts of a rapidly warming planet become more and more obvious.\u00a0 So obvious that other nations are responding with environmental and public health programs to respond to the mounting climate change crisis.<\/p>\n
Experts are deeply concerned that we may soon hit a \u201ctipping point\u201d after which little can be done to minimize the accelerating damage caused by global warming.\u00a0 As a result, the world\u2019s experts are arguing that fossil fuels should be kept in the ground; not developed for burning.<\/p>\n
That analysis is what fuels citizen efforts to stop the mining practice known as hydraulic fracturing \u2013 or fracking \u2013 and to oppose investments in new infrastructure projects to deliver fossil fuels for use, since those projects must operate for years in order to pay off the costs of such building.<\/p>\n
Advocates have been pushing for public investments in energy efficiency programs and renewable sources of power, like solar and wind.<\/p>\n
But what about cars?\u00a0 In the United States, nearly 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are generated in the transportation sector (just behind generating electricity), with light duty vehicles producing 60 percent of the sectors greenhouse gases.\u00a0 In New York, auto and truck emissions are almost double the climate-warming emissions of producing electricity.<\/p>\n
Everyone knows this, and countries are starting to act.\u00a0 China, the world’s largest car market, has been reported by Bloomberg News to be working on a plan to ban\u00a0the production and sale of vehicles powered only by fossil fuels.\u00a0 India, France, Britain and Norway have announced their intent to stop the sale of gas and diesel fueled cars.\u00a0 Germany is considering a plan.\u00a0 Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Korea and Spain have set official targets for electric car sales. The United States doesn’t have a federal policy, but at least eight states have set goals.<\/p>\n
One of those states, California, is one of the largest economies in the world, sixth.\u00a0 And now there are reports that California is considering joining the growing list of nations.<\/p>\n
According to recent reports, the head of California\u2019s Air Resources Board recently suggested the state could move to eventually replace vehicles running on combustion engines in the nation\u2019s largest auto market with electric cars or those running on other renewable energy. \u00a0The state has long been a front-runner in setting ambitious future targets for auto makers including sale of zero-emission vehicles.<\/p>\n
Cars and trucks represent California\u2019s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions by far. \u00a0In 2015, on-road transportation produced 34 percent of the state\u2019s total emissions, according to the air board\u2019s data.\u00a0 A full ban on fossil-fuel vehicles in California, which represents 12 percent of all auto sales in the United States, particularly with similar actions in other nations like China and India, would force the auto industry to dump gas and diesel powered cars.<\/p>\n
New York State, which prides itself on responding to the climate change crisis, and a major economic force in its own right, should act too.<\/p>\n
Of course, it\u2019s ridiculous that states have to act in this way.\u00a0 A national government relying on the best available science and speaking truthfully to the public would have acted already.\u00a0 But these are anything but normal times.<\/p>\n
Thus, states must act.\u00a0 California is under the hood looking at its plans to eliminate fossil fuels cars from its roads.\u00a0 New York should follow suit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite the nonsense that Americans hear from their national elected leaders, climate change is the single biggest policy challenge we face.\u00a0 There is no doubt that the planet is heating up and that human activities are the primary driver of global warming.\u00a0 The burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, are the most significant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1964,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions\/1964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}